Hellhole: Awakening (21 page)

As each day passed without locating the stringline, the iperion was dissipating further, decreasing the chances of the line ever being found again. By now his search effort had probably taken them a great distance from the severed stringline, but he bullishly insisted on going ahead. Finding that route was their only chance. Even if they located the opposite end of the stringline segment, they could not go back to Sonjeera; Carrington had made that clear, and his own sense of honor refused to let him to consider it an option … not that they could pursue it anyway.

And so the haulers pushed ahead and wandered farther afield, following Escobar’s orders. As everyone else was surely thinking, his heroic father would never have given up.

As his frustration increased, Escobar was plagued with homesick thoughts. At his wedding to Elaine Riomini, he had paid little attention to how beautiful his new wife was, or her personality, or whether their interests were compatible. The marriage forged an alliance between the Hallholmes and one of the most powerful bloodlines in the Constellation. It brought his family into the ranks of nobility. Escobar could not have wished for more. And when Elaine turned out to be pleasant enough, and on good terms with her powerful great-uncle, those things were unexpected benefits.

The wedding had been a sparkling, extravagant affair, with hundreds of guests from across the Crown Jewels; neither Escobar nor Elaine had ever met most of them. Her dowry had been enormous, and the wedding gifts alone added up to more wealth than Escobar had ever seen in his life. Intricate golden eggs, ornate wire-frame sculptures, jeweled towels, and bottles of wine so old and so valuable that no one would ever consider drinking them.

They were married in the vineyards of the old Adolphus estate. Though he would have preferred a ceremony on Sonjeera, Escobar realized it was a good symbolic way to twist the knife, should the exiled General ever learn about it.

He still hoped to groom their two sons into prominent members of the military. After defeating General Adolphus, Escobar had expected to claim administrative responsibilities over one or more Deep Zone planets, to supplement his family’s wealth and influence.

He had never dreamed that he and his entire fleet would get
lost
in deep space, and that the General would trip him and make him fall flat on his face.

*   *   *

The numbers didn’t lie.

Despite his noble blood and impressive marriage, Bolton Crais was little more than a glorified inventory specialist. Militarily speaking, he wasn’t much. Now his stature had risen even when he didn’t really want it to; he was a mathematical fortune-teller, able to see the future of the stranded fleet. And it was frighteningly grim.

Bolton sat alone in a small observation blister on the top deck of the
Diadem’s Glory.
The framework of the stringline hauler blocked part of his view, and the other warships crowded in docking clamps made him feel claustrophobic, but he stared out at the swatch of stars through the gaps. The fleet was in the middle of nowhere, cast adrift like rudderless sailing ships after a storm, with no hope of finding their way back to civilization.

Bolton had dimmed the lights in the observation blister as he tried to think of a solution, but the numbers were as implacable as the laws of physics. He had arranged the inventory himself. He knew their food supplies, fuel levels, life-support capabilities, energy reserves, and the number of crewmembers.

They could not survive for long.

Escobar Hallholme interrupted him from behind, making Bolton jump in his padded observation chair. “We need to find a way out of this, Major Crais.”

“I didn’t know you were there, Redcom.”

“I’m not here with an entourage or fanfare.” Escobar lowered his voice, as if there might be eavesdroppers. “Is it as bad as I think it is?”

Bolton got up from his seat. “I’m afraid it is, sir. When we loaded the ships on Aeroc, I included more than the recommended supply buffer, and I took contingency measures with equipment and personnel—but even factoring in unforeseen difficulties, I never prepared for a lengthy operation. The fleet should have resupplied after we seized planet Hallholme, and we expected the Constellation to send ships full of occupation forces later on, via the stringline.” He shook his head. “I have gone over the numbers, run models using the most extreme initial conditions. There is no possible way we can survive more than six weeks, maybe eight at the outside under strict food and water rationing.”

Startled, Escobar said, “I don’t plan on staying here six weeks, Major. We need to find an alternative before that.”

“I agree, we
must
. But what? With the stringline cut, our haulers can’t go anywhere. Our warships do have standard FTL engines, but there’s not enough fuel to take them to planet Hallholme … and that journey would still require almost three months, so our people would be dead before the ships arrived. Or we could try to head back to Sonjeera with standard engines, but that would take a minimum of
four
months under conventional power.”

“I shouldn’t have mocked you for your conservative estimates when you were loading the ships.” Escobar straightened. “On the other hand, if we had left sooner, we might have arrived before the General could blow the stringline.”

“Our only option now is to wait to be rescued,” Bolton said. “We must tighten our belts, reduce our life-support requirements and power drains … and hope we can last until someone comes for us.”

Escobar stared out at the stars. His voice carried a machete edge of anger. “And who would rescue us? General Adolphus? I would not allow that!” His voice became quieter. “When we left Sonjeera with all that fanfare, I was certain we’d wipe out the rebel vermin in their filthy nests, and we would do it quickly. Now it appears we were overconfident.”

“Hubris,” Bolton said. “It may be that we have only two choices left: die, or let Adolphus rescue us. From a practical standpoint, he will want to commandeer our ships. Neither option is heroic, but it’s what we have.”

*   *   *

Each time the crews went to the mess halls and saw their meager rations, they were reminded of the “temporary austerity measures” that were supposed to see them through this crisis.

On the bridge of the
Diadem’s Glory,
Escobar stared out at the starry expanse. He felt a dull knife in his stomach—tension and anxiety for now, but soon it would become the ever-increasing ache of hunger. Ten days ago, he’d sat at the captain’s table enjoying a feast, eating too much prime rib, opening too many bottles of wine.

As the son of Commodore Hallholme living on the Qiorfu estate, Escobar had never wanted for anything. When he was growing up, he had thought nothing of sending away his dinner plates with half the meal untouched. Any morsel that didn’t meet his fancy went into the waste processor. It was quite different now.

If they didn’t find the stringline soon, the Constellation fleet would be in no condition to attack General Adolphus.

“Redcom, there’s an emergency message from one of the search frigates,” Lieutenant Cristaine said. “Some sort of a struggle aboard.”

“Play it!” he barked.

At first, the communication bursts were peppered with shouts, cut-off sentences, and weapons fire. Finally, a haggard-looking man—Captain Felix Noorman—appeared on the screen. “Redcom, my crew staged a revolt. We have thirteen dead—seven in the actual conflict, and six mutineers whom I summarily executed. I saw no alternative, sir.”

Escobar started to respond, but the comm-officer told him, “There’s a forty-five-minute signal delay, sir.”

Captain Noorman continued his report. “Tensions have been high. Our seventh search pattern found nothing, and when we received a fleet-wide report of null results, twenty crewmen broke into the armory, killed the guards. Apparently they believed with fewer people aboard they could ration our food and fuel and use the FTL engines to make it to another star system.”

“That’s preposterous,” Escobar said under his breath. “Pause the transmission.” The report cut off as he rose from his command chair. “I’m going into my ready room. Pipe the rest of the signal in there. And I want to send a coded transmission back to Captain Noorman with explicit instructions.”

“Other ships in the fleet have already heard the broadcast, Redcom,” Lieutenant Cristaine cautioned.

Escobar silently cursed Noorman for revealing too much. The man should have kept his report classified. The Army of the Constellation had not operated on a wartime footing for years, and service in the military had been an exercise in self-aggrandizement for noble families with extra sons and daughters. Discipline had fallen apart, making the fleet a private club with fancy uniforms and large military ships.

As he walked to his ready room, Escobar said, “Broadcast my orders to the entire battle group. I am imposing strict, complete radio silence. All transmissions are to be sent on a coded band, reports to be made directly to me here on the flagship.
I
will choose which information to disseminate fleet-wide. This isn’t an entertainment network. This is a vital military operation.”

He thought of another tack that would impress the crew. “General Adolphus cut the stringline. For all we know, his spies could be eavesdropping on our transmissions. Any crewman who does not maintain silence per my order will be subject to court-martial.”

Feeling the stunned quiet behind him on the bridge, he sealed the door of his ready room, activated the codecall screen, and replayed Captain Noorman’s full report. He then composed his own message, keeping his voice hard and stern, knowing it would take the better part of an hour before his transmission reached the frigate—a transmission that contained fictitious information or, at the minimum, conjecture.

“Captain Noorman, listen to me very carefully. The mutineers aboard your ship were loyalists of General Adolphus. Somehow they infiltrated our fleet, intending to sow fear and destroy morale. We will institute a plan to root out any further traitors among us. Your loyalty and dedication to the cause is appreciated—not only by me, but by the Diadem and Lord Riomini.”

He closed the message, coded it, and transmitted. Better to create a scapegoat, find another shadowy enemy to blame, but he knew that wouldn’t last long. He could only pray that one of the scouts found the iperion path soon, but that thread of hope grew thinner with each passing moment.

30

The air had never smelled sweeter, the sunshine never looked brighter. General Adolphus turned his face up to the open skies of Ridgetop and drew in a long breath. He savored the moment and closed his eyes without even moving away from the landed passenger pod, just drinking in every tiny detail. The shimmering leaves of Ridgetop’s goldenwood trees danced in a faint breeze, twinkling as they reflected light. The sounds were like faint wind chimes.

After more than a decade of exile, this sensation of freedom, of being able to get away from his hellish planet, was euphoric. Only his ancestral home on Qiorfu could have pleased him more.

After the heady moment, he stepped away to meet Governor Goler. He didn’t focus in on the smells of the pavement, the hot metal from the descended pod, or the sounds of fuel trucks and crews unloading the shuttle. He just relished being somewhere other than Hellhole.

Goler interrupted his thoughts. “I can’t believe this is your first time off-planet in eleven years, General.” The lanky, dark-skinned man smiled, basking in Adolphus’s enjoyment.

“I was honor-bound by the terms of my agreement,” he said. “Yes, I had the wherewithal to slip away any time I wanted to. I could have taken on a new identity, escaped to a much more pleasant world—like Ridgetop.” The breeze picked up among the hillside groves. Oh, how the goldenwood sparkled! “But if I broke my word, then I would truly have been defeated. I waged my rebellion against the cynical dishonesty of the Crown Jewels. I stood for something different. I accepted the terms of my exile and, unlike the Diadem, I’m not a cheat or a liar.”

His neck and shoulders tensed at the mere thought of how Michella had betrayed him, but he forced himself to relax. “I can see why you chose to keep your main residence here, Governor, rather than back on Sonjeera. This is a beautiful world.”

“My people like it,” Carlson Goler said. “Even better now that we’re free.”

The General enjoyed a long, slow exhale. “Yes … freedom.”

Because he had made this trip on impulse, he did not expect, nor want, any fanfare or formal reception. Even though the Constellation fleet had been hamstrung and now drifted helpless in the middle of nowhere, he wouldn’t launch any DZ-wide victory celebrations yet—not until he rounded up the lost ships, forced Hallholme’s surrender, and incorporated the fleet into his own Deep Zone Defense Force.

But in a few weeks …

Every day since unveiling his new stringline network, he had made significant progress in unifying the frontier worlds, but there had also been tragic deaths: the Original alien Cippiq, the shadow-Xayan leader Fernando-Zairic, all of the optimistic emissaries who had gone to Sonjeera to win over the Diadem but had paid with their lives. The losses deeply saddened Adolphus.

Creating the new stringline network had also been burdened with regrettable costs. When traveling from Hellhole to Ridgetop, he rode on what he had christened the “Ernst Packer Memorial Stringline,” named for the brave pilot who had died while laying down the iperion path to connect the planets. And before that, his best friend Franck Tello and the brave fighters who had died because of Commodore Hallholme’s treachery in the Battle of Sonjeera.…

Yes, the price of independence from the Constellation was high, but necessary, and he did not like to count the cost.

Adolphus sneezed, his eyes and nose irritated by something in the air. Embarrassed, he tried to look dignified, but Goler just chuckled. “Sorry, General. Plenty of tree pollens here that you’re not used to. Don’t worry, my housekeeper has local remedies—you’ll feel fine in a while.”

The territorial governor’s A-frame house had a magnificent view of the steep goldenwood-covered hills. His old servant, Tasmine, made them a fruity tea with a bitter aftertaste. The old woman urged the General to drink up nevertheless. “Priniflower,” she said. “Do you good.” He soon felt his congestion clearing, his eyes becoming less scratchy.